Album Review : Bombino Agadez

Bombino Agadez

This is a really tough album to review - not to listen to; that is easy and a wonderfully enriching experience, but tough to review because the music is only a part of the album; how do you review the hardships and history that went into the making of this?

Bombino is a young Tuareg and one of the new generation of Saharan musicians. He is from the same root as Tamikrest and Tinariwen and he grew up listening to their music as well as that of Hendrix, John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Page as well as legends such as Ali Farka Toure. As part of the legendary Tidwat he recorded with Keith Richards and Charlie Watt and all of those influences are present here as well as the influence of the desert and the years of violent suppression of the Tuaregs as they sought independence.

All that goes together to make music that is hypnotic, stirring and deeply soulful. Recorded, at least in part, live, its jams and progressions are fronted by Bombino’s guitar and chanted vocals but there is a wonderful contribution from his band of Kawissan Mohammed on guitar and Ibrahim Emoud Atchinguil on drums. They are in turn backed up by a number of western musicians as seems to be the pattern these days but the sense is definitely of the lead being taken by Bombino and his Tuareg partners.

There is a wealth of music leaking out from Africa at present and when you add this to musicians like Bassekou Kouyate and Vieux Farka Toure from Mali and the reissues of music from Benin and Niger you definitely begin to see the legacy of music that Africa has been giving to the West – Bombino is one of the best and this is an early entry for World album of the year and quite possibly in the running for Album of the Year as well.

Download it here now!

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